Ben Packham makes the inevitable Murdoch shot-in-the-back at departing Senator Fielding after Fielding today sank any chance of Abbott’s circus parade stunt of presenting a private member’s bill to the Upper House, in support of a plebiscite on the carbon ‘tax’.

More on that in a bit, but do have a read of Packham’s little tirade and take note that The Australian and her editorial staff are indeed fickle creatures when it comes to political winds not filling their sails when they expect it. It’s a nasty, bitter, bile-driven piece of angsty op-ededness, but what else does one expect from such a split-personality rag. Let the records show that Fielding sided as often with the Coalition as he did against it, which is the position of a genuine independent, despite Family First being a strongly conservative political representation. Issues such as “Alcopops”, Youth Allowance increases in 2009 and increases to luxury car tax in the 2008 budget are three such instances. Never let it be said though, that Fielding wasn’t a constant source of amusement both for his outspoken beliefs – creationism, same-sex marriage, climate change, abortion – and his almost complete inability to speak to the media without making a major gaff or needing to be dressed up in some ridiculous costume. Politics will be a duller spectator sport with his passing back into the pews of whatever Pentecostal church his fancy currently takes.

It’s certainly dull, and predictable presently, given the nature of the never-ending banality being produced by Tony Abbott in his hobby-horse ride against anything government seeks to promote. Even Question Time in the House, as entertaining as that can be, has become dull and monotonous with the daily attempt at censure by the opposition, only to be defeated by government and the independents. Abbott just doesn’t seem to get the fact that those independents he burned back in August 2010 are simply not going to switch sides to vote with him on noisome censure motions which are simply a waste of everyone’s parliamentary time. He even had the temerity to break with tradition during his ‘welcome’ to the joint sitting yesterday to New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, by dragging his hobby-horse into the speech & going for a brief anti-carbon-tax ride. I thought it a distasteful show of ignorance & thought Key must consider the man a fool, given that New Zealand does have an Emissions Trading Scheme, which in his own words, works.

Abbott’s circus will benefit from the addition of a travelling clown next week in the bug-eyed form of British peer and professional loon, Lord Monckton. Monckton apparently intends speaking around the country on “the antithesis of the freedom ideal and the authoritarian consensus that grips academia and politics today”. In other words, he will be promoting precisely what Abbott promotes daily. The art of ignoring the blindingly obvious in favour of biased opinion for the sake of ideology & personal philosophy. I guess that’s why the mining Industry, Gina Reinhart out the front, is funding this jaunt downunda. I wonder whether he’ll have the common-sense and good grace to raise & rant against the issue of cowardly death threats made anonymously against Climate Scientists? Probably not. His audience don’t tend to fall into the ‘common-sense or good grace’ mob. Very much in the same cadre as that crew at The Australian in my view.